A Plucky Girl

I shook my head. She took my hand and brought me up to mother's side.

"Mr. Randolph," she said, "this is our youngest hostess, Miss Westenra Wickham."

Mr. Randolph bowed, said something in a cold, courteous tone, scarcely glanced at me, and then resumed his conversation with mother.

CHAPTER IX

THE ARTIST'S EYE

During dinner I found myself seated next Miss Armstrong. Miss Armstrong was on one side of me, and her mother was at the other. I don't really know how I got placed between two such uncongenial people, but perhaps it was good for me, showing me the worst as well as the best of our position at once. I was having a cold douche with a vengeance.

As we were taking our soup (I may as well say that the ménu was excellent, quite as good as many a grand West End dinner which I had attended in my palmy days), Miss Armstrong bent towards me, spilling a little of her soup as she did so, and said, in a somewhat audible whisper —

"I wish you would give me a hint about him."

"About whom?" I asked in return.

"Mr. Randolph; he is one of the most stylish people I have ever met. What are his tastes? Don't you know anything at all about him? Is he married, for instance?"

"I never saw Mr. Randolph before, and I know nothing about him," I answered in a low, steady voice, which was in marked contrast to Miss Armstrong's buzzing, noisy whisper.

"Oh my!" said that young lady, returning again to the contemplation of her soup. Her plate was taken away, and in the interval she once more led the attack.

"He is distingué," she said, "quite one of the upper ten. I wish you would tell me where you met him before. You must have met him before, you know; he would not come to a house like this if he was not interested in you and your mother. He is a very good-looking man; I admire him myself immensely."

"I don't care to make personal remarks at dinner," I said, looking steadily at the young lady.

"Oh my!" she answered again to this; but as some delicious turbot was now facing her, she began to eat it, and tried to cover her mortification.

Presently my neighbour to my right began to speak, and Mrs. Armstrong's manners were only a shade more intolerable than her daughter's.

"Marion has come up to London to study h'Art," she said. She uttered the last word in a most emphatic tone. "Marion has a great taste for h'Art, and she wants to attend one of the schools and become an h'artist. Do you think you could give us any advice on the subject, Miss Wickham?"

I answered gently that I had never studied Art myself, having no leaning in that direction.

"Oh dear: now I should have said you had the h'artist's h'eye," said Mrs. Armstrong, glancing at my dress and at the way my hair was arranged as she spoke. "You are very stylish, you know; you are a good-looking girl, too, very good-looking. You don't mind me giving you a plain compliment, do you, my dear?"

I made no reply, but my cheeks had never felt more hot, nor I myself more uncomfortable.

Mrs. Armstrong looked me all over again, then she nodded across my back at Miss Armstrong, and said, still in her buzzing half-whisper, for the benefit of her daughter —

"Miss Wickham has got the h'artist's h'eye, and she'll help us fine, after she's got over her first amazement. She's new to this business any one can see; but, Marion, by-and-by you might ask her if she would lend you that bodice to take the pattern. I like the way it is cut so much. You have got a good plump neck, and would look well in one made like it."

Marion's answer to this was, "O mother, do hush;" and thus the miserable meal proceeded.

I was wondering how my own mother was getting on, and at last I ventured to glance in her direction. She was seated at the head of the table, really doing nothing in the way of carving, for the dishes, except the joints, were all handed round, and the joints Jane Mullins managed, standing up to them and carving away with a rapidity and savoir faire which could not but arouse my admiration. The upper part of the table seemed to be in a very peaceful condition, and I presently perceived that Mr. Randolph led the conversation. He was having an argument on a subject of public interest with Captain Furlong, and Captain Furlong was replying, and Mr. Randolph was distinctly but in very firm language showing the worthy captain that he was in the wrong, and Mrs. Furlong was laughing, and mother was listening with a pleased flush on her cheeks. After all the dear mother was happy, she was not in the thick of the storm, she was not assailed by two of the most terrible women it had ever been my lot to encounter.

The meal came to an end, and at last we left the room.

"Stay one minute behind, dear," said Jane Mullins to me.

I did so. She took me into her tiny little parlour on the ground floor.

"Now then, Miss Wickham, what's the matter? You just look as if you were ready to burst into tears. What's up? Don't you think our first dinner was very successful – a good long table all surrounded with people pleased with their dinner, and in high good humour, and you were the cause of the success, let me tell you, dear. They will talk of you right and left. This boarding-house will never be empty from this night out, mark my words; and I never was wrong yet in a matter of plain common-sense."

"But oh, dear!" I cried, and I sank into a chair, and I am sure the tears filled my eyes; "the company are so mixed, Miss Mullins, so terribly mixed."

"It takes a lot of mixing to make a good cake," was Jane's somewhat ambiguous answer.

"Now, what do you mean?"

"Well, any one can see with half an eye that you object to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong, and I will own they are not the sort of folks a young lady like yourself is accustomed to associate with; but all the same, if we stay here and turn this house into a good commercial success, we must put up with those sort of people, they are, so to speak, the support of an establishment of this sort. I call them the flour of the cake. Now, flour is not interesting stuff, at least uncombined with other things; but you cannot make a cake without it. People of that sort will go to the attics, and if we don't let the attics, my dear Miss Wickham, the thing won't pay. Every attic in the place must be let, and to people who will pay their weekly accounts regularly, and not run up bills. It's not folks like your grand Captain Furlong, nor even like Mr. Randolph, who make these sort of places 'hum,' so to speak. This establishment shall hum, my dear, and hum right merrily, and be one of the most popular boarding-houses in London. But you leave people like the Armstrongs to me. To-morrow you shall sit right away from them."

"No, I will not," I said stoutly, "why should you have all the burden, and mother and I all the pleasure? You are brave, Miss Mullins."

"If you love me, dear, call me Jane, I can't bear the name of Mullins. From the time I could speak I hated it, and three times in my youth I hoped to change it, and three times was I disappointed. The first man jilted me, dear, and the second died, and the third went into an asylum. I'm Mullins now, and Mullins I'll be to the end. I never had much looks to boast of, and what I had have gone, so don't fret me with the knowledge that I am an old maid, but call me Jane."

"Jane you shall be," I said. She really was a darling, and I loved her.

I found after my interview with Jane that the time in the drawing-room passed off extremely well, and this I quickly discovered was owing to Mr. Randolph, who, without making the smallest effort to conciliate the Armstrongs, or the Cousinses, or any of the other attic strata, as Jane called them, kept them all more or less in order. He told a few good stories for the benefit of the company, and then he sat down to the piano and sang one or two songs. He had a nice voice, not brilliant, but sweet and a real tenor, and he pronounced his words distinctly, and every one could listen, and every one did listen with pleasure. As to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong they held their lips apart in their amazement and delight. Altogether, I felt that Mr. Randolph had made the evening a success, and that without him, notwithstanding Jane's cheery words, the thing would have been an absolute failure.

Just towards the close of the evening he came up to my side.

"I must congratulate you," he said.

"On what?" I answered somewhat bitterly.

"On your delightful home, on your bravery." He gave me a quick glance, which I could not understand, which I did not understand until many months afterwards. I was not sure at that moment whether he was laughing at me or whether he was in earnest.

"I have something to thank you for," I said after a moment, "it was good of you to entertain our guests, but you must not feel that you are obliged to do so."

He looked at me then again with a grave and not easily comprehended glance.

"I assure you," he said slowly, "I never do anything I don't like. Pray don't thank me for exactly following my own inclinations. I was in the humour to sing, I sing most nights wherever I am. If you object to my singing pray say so, but do not condemn me to silence in the future, particularly as you have a very nice piano."

"You look dreadfully out of place in this house," was my next remark; and then I said boldly, "I cannot imagine why you came."

"I wonder if that is a compliment, or if it is not," said Mr. Randolph. "I do not believe I look more out of place here than you do, but it seems to me that neither of us are out of place, and that the house suits us very well. I like it; I expect I shall be extremely comfortable. Jane Mullins is an old friend of mine. I always told her, that whenever she set up a boarding-house I would live with her. For instance, did you ever eat a better dinner than you had to-night?"

"I don't know," I answered, "I don't care much about dinners, but it seemed good, at least it satisfied every one."

"Now I am a hopeless epicure," he said slowly. "I would not go anywhere if I was not sure that the food would be of the very best. No, Miss Wickham, I am afraid, whether you like it or not, you cannot get rid of me at present; but I must not stand talking any longer. I promised to lend your mother a book, it is one of Whittier's, I will fetch it."

He left the room, came back with the book in question, and sat down by mother's side. He was decidedly good-looking, and most people would have thought him charming, but his manner to me puzzled me a good deal, and I was by no means sure that I liked him. He had grey eyes, quite ordinary in shape and colour, but they had a wonderfully quizzical glance, and I felt a sort of fear, that when he seemed to sympathise he was laughing at me; I also felt certain that I had seen him before. Who was he? How was it possible that a man of his standing should have anything to do with Jane Mullins, and yet they were excellent friends. The little woman went up to him constantly in the course of the evening, and asked his advice on all sorts of matters. What did it mean? I could not understand it!

We took a few days settling down, and during that time the house became full. It was quite true that Mrs. Armstrong talked of us to her friends. The next day, indeed, she took a complete survey of the house accompanied by Jane; making frank comments on all she saw, complaining of the high prices, but never for a moment vouchsafing to give up her large front attic, which was indeed a bedroom quite comfortable enough for any lady. She must have written to her friends in the country, for other girls somewhat in appearance like Marion Armstrong joined our family circle, sat in the drawing-room in the evening, talked at Mr. Randolph, and looked at him with eager, covetous eyes.

Mr. Randolph was perfectly polite to these young ladies, without ever for a single moment stepping down from his own pedestal. Marion Armstrong, poke as she would, could not discover what his special tastes were. When she questioned him, he declared that he liked everything. Music? – certainly, he adored music. Art? – yes, he did sketch a little. The drama? – he went to every piece worth seeing, and generally on first nights. The opera? – he owned that a friend of his had a box for the season, and that he sometimes gave him a seat in it.